Betty is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
Betty is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 1,162 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,161 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In total, there are currently 982,734 people – children, adults and seniors – named Betty living in the United States, which is approximately 0.29 % of the entire population.
History tends to focus on the most famous and best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Betty is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, Betty has reached the SmartGenius top ranking #2 more than once, although the last time was some while ago, way back in the last century in 1934. But even though the peak of its popularity was many decades ago, the name Betty has been given to newborn girls every year since records began. Betty is of exceptional enduring popularity, conveying the special vibes of the20th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Betty was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The popularity of the name Betty peaked long ago, but the name has nevertheless arrived in the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #1,050 in our statistics - perhaps a far cry from when your grandparents or great-grandparents were kids and Betty made it into the top ten more than once, but still: traditional names often prove to be perennial favorites - so, maybe it's only a matter of time before Betty tops out again.
Betty is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 981,161 women would currently turn around if you called out BETTY really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Betty on position 12 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Betty, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in West Virginia? Here, 1,79% of all female residents bear the name Betty – that is a total of 26,469 women with this popular name and no other state has as many women named Betty relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: in West Virginia Betty belongs to the top 10 of all womens names – the 26,469 elevate their name up to place #2 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names for West Virginia.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: 3.2% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a B. This means that B as the first letter for girls' names is neither particularly common nor rare. The most common first letters of girls' names are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Betty is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Thus, if 3.2% of all girls’ names start with a B, this initial letter is slightly less common than all other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are girls' names with B that are quite common in the U.S., the most common at present is Barbara.
If your name is Betty and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Betty, you can simply say:
Butterfly
Elephant
Tiger
Tiger
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Betty
Betty
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
B
E
T
T
Y
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
B
E
T
T
Y
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Betty sounds like this:
